


All Kinds of Prisons

by HelloHeadquarters



Series: Cryptage Week 2020 [4]
Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Cryptage Week (Apex Legends), Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26759836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloHeadquarters/pseuds/HelloHeadquarters
Summary: Day 4 - AUElliott is a pilot, but his titan is just a shell and he's locked inside. His only solace is a voice on the radio.Please Note: This story contains very mild references to suicidal thoughts. Please take care.
Relationships: Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Mirage | Elliott Witt
Series: Cryptage Week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1942780
Comments: 3
Kudos: 48





	All Kinds of Prisons

**Author's Note:**

> Day 4 - AU
> 
> My AU is a Titanfall fic. Go figure. ^_^

Mercenary Pilot Elliott R. Witt, P-reg number 40996, Class C, linked with Titan JB-3423, (inactive), was totally, totally fucked. He and his Ion class had poked their heads out of the forest just long enough to get caught in a clusterfuck between a handful of remnants from the IMC who couldn't let it go and the 6-4, who were quite happy to tear it from their cold, dead hands, and were quickly shown why they shouldn't have. 

He hadn't even fired off a shot or even uttered a damn word when it seemed the two factions decided to put their differences aside and laser the fuck out of him instead. 

His poor titan, poor JB who he had been linked with for almost a year, hadn't stood a chance and the controls, the power feeds, everything was dead before they'd even hit the ground. The restraints on the jump seat had snapped and Elliott's skull had pinged off the cockpit wall like it was nothing, knocking him out cold. 

When he finally came around, the muted sounds of gunfire had disappeared and all was silent. Groaning, he rolled on to his back, the whole titan now lying on its own back on the ground, and stared at the hatch forlornly. He didn't feel much like moving let alone clambering out of his busted titan, but he also couldn't lay there forever trying not to hurl. 

"Fucking great," he muttered as he reached for the release handle only to find it warped and twisted so badly it wouldn't move an inch. He could feel the stickiness of blood at his temple, and every part of him was crying out in protest as he shoved against the handle with all the strength he had left. 

"Shit," he hissed as he finally gave up. He sat back against the metal, lifting his legs to rest his wrists on his knees, the grim reality of his situation pressing down on him. The manual release was completely wrecked, and the titan had no power. 

He was stuck inside. 

He closed his eyes, gauging the way the his head ached and the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him. Definitely a concussion, which was no surprise but was pretty fucking far from good news. He reached over to check beneath the upended seat for a med kit, and used what he found to patch himself up enough that it would be safe for him to fall asleep, just for a little while. 

-

When he woke up later he didn't know how much time had passed, but the world was at least behaving itself and deigning to stay put. He had a headache he hadn't known the likes of since the three day bender he went on to celebrate his certification, and his whole body ached something fierce. His mouth felt dry and furry, and he clambered over to his bag to grab a bottle of water. 

He started to knock it back but then forced himself to slow down. He had no idea how long he was likely to be stuck inside his dead titan, or if he was ever even going to get out at all. JB had been a second rate, busted up piece of garbage when he'd managed to scrape the credits together to buy it, and he wasn't exactly rolling with the kinds of people who had his back either. JB couldn't self-repair, not with this level of damage at least, and his job had been a freelance one on some no-name planetoid in the asshole of nowhere, just to retrieve some old codger's research into prowler mating patterns. Elliott snorted to himself. He was entirely the kind of guy who would meet a grisly end on a mission to find out how and when prowlers fucked, and that was a bitter pill to swallow really. 

Elliott sighed at himself. No point throwing a pity party when he was the only one in attendance. He looked around the darkened cockpit and tried to take stock of his situation.

Titans were robust and took a hell of a lot of cracking, but they weren't exactly air tight so oxygen wasn't going to be an issue. He had emergency rations of food and water in his bag that could stretch out to a few weeks if he paced himself and, he thought with a shudder, the worst problem he faced at that moment was going to be with his own bodily functions. Sadly for JB, there was a small vent that regulated the temperature in the cockpit. Not big enough for a man to squeeze through but he could definitely squat over it if he closed his eyes and pretended he was literally anywhere else. He was just glad he'd managed to keep his breakfast down. 

Besides food, water and a few basic meds, he had a R-201 with a few spare magazines, in case things got really dire, some emergency flares, a copy of _Strangers On A Train_ that had belonged to his mother, and a walkie-talkie. He'd packed light, the mission wasn't even a whole days work, but then he hadn't reckoned on getting sealed inside a titan-shaped tomb. 

He tossed the walkie back and forth in his hands. Making his presence known might be the last thing he ever did but other side of that coin had him slowly dying of thirst inside a metal prison. He decided to take his chances. 

"Uh... breaker breaker, I guess. This is Pilot Witt with the Solace Freelance Recovery Company, can anyone hear me? Over."

He waited, somewhere between dread and hope but his only answer was a harsh roar of static. If there was anybody still out there on the other side of his beaten up titan, they were well beyond hearing him now. 

Over the next few hours, he resolutely tried and tried again, only to receive the shot of static that went right through him every time for his efforts. He tried to keep tabs on his head injury, scoured the cockpit for anything he could find and unsuccessfully tried his luck with the fused handle more than once. He was tired and hungry and thirsty, but he was still not desperate enough to break into his rations just yet. Things were looking very bleak for Elliott Witt. 

He groaned and slammed his head back against the wall of his titan, and finally admitted to himself that this was probably where he was going to die. 

Elliott wasn't very good at being alone. He was a good looking guy and he damn well knew it, and the second he had learned that people would pay attention to him because of it was the second he had become accustomed to never being by himself. Back on Solace it was almost a running joke. Times could be tough, but if Witt was sharing his bed it wasn't _that_ bad. 

He tried not to think that this particular fate had been waiting for him all along.

Back in the day, back when his fellow man was fighting to keep what little they had, he'd had fucking _ideals_ , a vague notion of right and wrong and these fuckers coming to claim what was never theirs had been a cause. But then some weird shit had gone down on Typhon and suddenly he'd found himself broke and at a loose end. 

He was a Pilot, skilled in ways that so many were not but without a war to fight he was just a guy with a talent he could no longer use. He'd fought and won and lost and everything in between, dedicating himself to a cause and trying his god damned best, but when the dust had settled he was just another directionless asshole without a plan, without a fucking _family_ , thanks to the IMC, and completely alone.  
Desperate times called for desperate measures, and there were enough people willing to pay handsomely to get back a little of what they'd lost that Elliott fell into mercenary work almost without his notice. It was easy, it paid well enough that he could keep himself in whiskey and roof over his head, but it was... empty. Pointless. It went nowhere. 

Well, no, he thought with a twisted smirk. It had lead him here. 

Elliott felt abandoned, even though he knew the guys back at base didn't really even think of him as a friend. They were a group of ragtag, aimless fucks, just trying to carve out a place for themselves without the capacity to make room for anybody else. Brass tacks, no one was going to miss him, and no one was going to notice he was gone before it was too late. 

He closed his eyes against the world and gave up. When there had been a fight, he had been one of the best. Not content to throw himself all over the shop with stupid grapple or plug his system so full of stim it made his eyeballs shake, Elliott had gravitated instead towards holo-tech. His mother's baby, her fifth child in a way, and he'd really had no other choice but to follow in her footsteps when she spoke about it with such passion. It fascinated him to see a perfect replica of his own form, acting every part the soldier, albeit one made entirely of light. He hadn't forgotten that, long after his mother had forgotten his name or how many sons she had lost, and he took it with him even now as he waited for his world to end. There was no one watching him, no one to document his last few hours of losing his mind at the thought of being alone, so he sent out a hologram, just to enjoy it's limited company for a precious few seconds.

Out in the open, among the fires and explosions and general chaos of a fight, the hologram was just another soldier, indistinguishable from the real thing, but in the silent, dark cockpit Elliott could finally see the faint glow it emitted as his holo-self looked down the sights of its gun, hiding in a battle that wasn't even there.

Elliott cocked his head to one side. Of course it was glowing, it was made of light. Which meant, he thought, scrambling to his knees and frantically beginning to shed his gear, that it had a power source. The small pack that powered the holo-tech was attached to a small belt he usually wore slung across his chest. He pried the casing from the battery and took just a moment to look at it, hope rising in his chest as clambered over to the control panel.

He bloodied his fingertips trying to wrench off the plate that covered the hatch's wiring, before resorting to jimmying a strut from the jump seat and levering the metal free. 

Elliott was far from a titan engineer, but he at least knew enough to identify the hydraulics that controlled the hatch to the cockpit, and the wires that powered it. He tried to assess the damage but it was too dark, so he had to feel around for the flashlight he was constantly moving from place to place around the cockpit so often he'd forgotten where he had left it. 

After a ten minute search and fifteen minutes of on-the-fly rigging and rewiring, Elliott had the battery hooked up only to find that it's output was no where near good enough to force the fused hatch open again. Defeated once more, Elliott slumped back against the wall of the titan and rested his head in his hands. 

It felt like a shot straight to his gut. He had been keeping his panic at bay by believing that his usual knack for worming his way out of any sticky situation he usually got himself into wouldn't let him down, but now he just felt doomed. With his only plan a bust, Elliott was suddenly very afraid, not only to die but also the terrible way he was going to do it, alone, starving, broken and _slowly_ , with nothing but pain to accompany him to the other side. He remembered his rifle, head filled with the sudden strange thought of how loud and bright it would be to fire a bullet off inside this metal shell, how indecent and intrusive and wrong it would seem. He laughed as he dragged his hands through his hair, feeling something bubble up inside of him, fear and rage all mixed together and violent.

"Fuck!" he screamed, hammering his fists against the metallic walls. "Fuck this! Fuck the IMC, fuck this shitty little planet and fuck you, JB! Your protocols are a heap of shit!"

Panting, he sank slowly to his knees, hands pressed against his face as he let out sobs like gunfire. Elliott was going to die, and no one would ever know. 

He knew it was stupid to fall apart like this, but he didn't care. He was fucked either way, so what did it matter if he sped up the process by going to pieces? Wiping the back of his gloved hand across his face, he looked down at the useless walkie-talkie.

"Please," he sobbed brokenly into the receiver. "Please, if there's someone there... I need your help. Please. For fuck's sake, I'm gonna die!"

Elliott curled up against the jump seat and let himself fall asleep, finally understanding what people meant when they said silence could be deafening.

-

It didn't matter how long he had been asleep. Elliott only woke up because he was desperate for a piss, and once he had concluded his business he lay down and tried to sleep again. His stomach growled at him, clenching painfully, and the quarter of a bottle of water he allowed himself to drink only caused the cramps to intensify. He knew he would never be able to sleep like that, so he pushed himself up and let out a long, slow breath.

What was it he had heard once, about hunger and survival? Don't eat anything until it hurts your head, not your gut, or something like that. His head already fucking hurt, but he didn't feel dizzy or spaced out so he figured it was best to lay off the food bars for a few more hours at least. 

He grabbed the book his mother had gifted to him instead, some ancient old text from the Core Systems about murder and, well, plausible deniability. He had never read it all the way through. He wasn't a big reader to begin with, but when he did he preferred short horror stories without the pretention, which was ironic because as a man slowly dying, trapped in a machine and completely alone, he was pretty much living in one. 

He tried to read but he couldn't focus, couldn't stop his mind wandering to darker and darker places. His only hope was that scavengers would find him. It was possible that news of the little skirmish outside would travel and in a few days scrappers would descend on the place like vultures, hopefully releasing him from his terrible fate when they tried to pick JB clean.

He had placed the walkie on top of his bag, and he couldn't stop his eyes drifting to it every few minutes, just to make sure it was still there. It was his only lifeline to the outside world now, even if there was no one around to hear him, because one day, hopefully soon, there could well be, and it would be fucking typical of him to have misplaced the damn thing when there was. 

-

His faded watch told him it was noon when he heard the first sounds from outside, muffled, heavy thumps like footsteps. He got to his knees and began to hammer frantically against the walls with all his might. 

"Hello? Hello, please, is someone there? Hello? Please, I'm in here, I'm inside the titan! Hello?"

The footsteps grew closer, but whatever momentary hope had sparked inside Elliott started to fade when he realised they were to heavy to be human, and to dense to be robotic.

He was calling out for help to a pack of fucking prowlers. 

Of course there were going to be prowlers. Outside, the dusty ground was probably sticky with the blood of those who hadn't been quick enough and prowlers could smell that shit a mile off. Elliott wasn't concerned about them, not even with the first muted shriek of a claw against the metal body of JB. It wouldn't have been much of a testament to Hammond's capabilities if a damned prowler could peel open a titan like a tin can. 

Even the prowler seemed to realise this as it soon became disinterested in the large, metallic body and thudded away to join the rest of its fellows to share in the far more accessible meals. With a reckless shrug, Elliott tore open a compressed food bar and bit half of it off in one mouthful. One of his last meals was going to be spent in the company of savage beasts and corpses, which he supposed was fair enough. 

-

He was far from comfortable, hungry and thirsty and sore as hell, but by the third day the thing that was really starting to bother him was the boredom. He'd finished the book more than once, and had started to fold the pages into strange patterns so the book would no longer close. He had finished the rest of his water from the first bottle, spent a good few hours in just his underwear while the sun was at its highest to make sure his clothes remained as clean as possible, messed with his curls for a while and tried to sleep as much as he could. The prowlers hadn't returned since that first day and he was starting to miss even their company, such as it was. He hadn't tried to the walkie-talkie again, he was becoming paranoid about running the battery down, and he had left the one from his holo-tech hooked up to the door switch simply because he couldn't see any point in putting it back.

He had looked over the entire control panel, and though there wasn't actually much damage to the wiring itself there was simply nothing to power them. Either JB's batteries had shaken loose or exploded when they got hit, or else some other pilot had pinched them for some emergency field engineering to their own titan. He had no way of knowing, and even though he had spent a productive hour kicking in the panel beneath the jump seat to give himself an extra foot of room in the hollow beneath, that was as close as he could get to outside before the metal became far too tough for anything short of an Ion's canon. 

He glanced at the dead panel again. Being the fucking idiot that he was, he hadn't even been wearing his helmet when the gunshots had begun, relying on the titans own cockpit comms to speak to JB while he fussed around with his kit. By the time they had gotten hit he hadn't even finished doing up his damn fly, and his helmet had been sent flying with the rest of him. 

He picked it up and looked at it forlornly. Even his helmet was just a useless piece of junk now. With JB just a powerless shell, there was no way to relay his communications out into the world. The only thing he could speak to now was the dead titan that was to serve as his grave. 

He glanced between the helmet and the hydraulics. A plan was desperately trying to form in his mind, but between the concussion and the hunger it was slow going. Eventually, however, something clicked, and Elliott jumped up and began to carefully detach the battery, wincing at his stinging fingertips as it came free. Then he shuffled across to the comms panel, using the strut from the jump seat first this time, and pried it free.

Maybe the battery wasn't strong enough to juice the hydraulics, but the comms demanded a far more modest voltage, and Elliott hoped and prayed to whatever god could still hear him that this would work.

There was a small spark and the faint smell of burning electrics, but as Elliott's empty stomach plummeted there was a flicker of light in the corner as his helmet came weakly to life.

Elliott choked out a sob and reached out carefully for his helmet, barely able to believe what he was seeing as he slowly lowered it onto his head. The HUD flickered a string of boot up codes and Elliott breathed out a ragged sigh as for the first time in days he saw a light at the end of his very dark tunnel.

He had to input some tricky commands to circumvent the fact that his helmet was trying to link with a dead titan, engaging an emergency protocol of his own to send out a distress call on a loop.

"Mayday. Mayday. My name is Elliott Witt, P-reg. number 40996. I am a pilot with the SFRC. Three days ago my titan was fuse locked and deactivated and I am now trapped inside. I am located in the South East quadrant of Planetoid-CR45, inside an Ion Class. Please, I am in need of assistance. Mayday. Mayday. Message repeats."

He took off the helmet and switched the comms to an open frequency, sitting back against the wall with nervous apprehension as his own voice echoed around the chamber, over and over again. 

-

Any hope he had found soon began to fade as Elliott's call for aid remained unanswered after another chilled night inside his titan. His rifle was starting to look a little too friendly as the incessant playback of his message over and over started to get under his skin. He didn't much care that he was a while off from running low on supplies if all he had to look forward to was slowly whittling away at them until they finally ran out, before waiting around like a skeleton that hadn't remembered to die yet. 

He closed his eyes and sighed. He wished he had one of those families growing up, the kind with a strong sense of belief in a bullshit motto. "Witt's never give in," or "Witt's thrive where others just survive," or something equally lame. This Witt wanted to give up, he wanted to do anything besides spend what was left of his life in the horizontal cockpit of a fucked up titan.

"Hello? Pilot? Do you copy?"

Elliott's eyes widened and he pushed himself up straight against the wall. 

"Yes! Oh thank fuck... yes... yes I damn well copy," he said, laughing with relief. "I hear you!"

The comms crackled a little, but the signal seemed to be holding strong.

"My name is Tae Joon Park. I picked up your transmission on the sub network."

Elliott was grinning from ear to ear. "Well, Tae Joon Park, I gotta tell you your voice is the sweetest sound I ever heard."

"Um... thank you," came the response. Elliott laughed again, his relief all-encompassing to hear another human voice besides his own. 

"Sorry man, sorry... just... you have no idea how happy I am to hear from you."

"I can imagine. Your message indicated you were trapped inside a titan, is that correct?"

Elliott thumped his fist against the wall, generating a hollow boom in reply. "Locked up tight in here. Mechanism's fused and there's no power."

"Understood. How are you for supplies?"

Elliott was starting to get a feeling of foreboding rising in his chest. He wasn't expecting a huge swell of people to rush to his aid, he was a grown man stuck in a titan, not some kid down a well, but besides his name, Park hadn't really identified himself.

"Fine for a bit," Elliott said slowly. "Say, who did you say you work for again Park?"

"I didn't. And I am sorry, but I am not affiliated with any rescue group. I just happened to find your signal, well, by accident."

Elliott sighed. "Is there no way for you to pass the message on? I know I said I'm fine but time's still sorta of the essence, here."

There was a moment of dead air. "Of course," Park muttered eventually. 

"Where are you? Solace? Because they've got a pretty good Search and-"

"Gaea," Park replied.

Of course, Elliott thought with a frustrated tick of his head. Solace might not have been perfect but Gaea was a little like evil bastard central. You could hardly walk down the street without tripping over an evil corporation or shady someone selling knock off goods from a darkened doorway they didn't even own. Good samaritans were few and far between on Gaea, Elliott had been paid by enough assholes there to know that.

"Right," he said. "Which part?"

"Suotamo," Park said.

Even better. He'd been in Suotamo before, many times. It was a neon light on a trash pile, cherry blossom forcing it's way through the cracked sidewalk to cover the crap that lay beneath. The cream rose to the top, as it does everywhere just like the scum, but the Suotamo Elliott knew was almost the same as Solace City. Desperate people in desperate places, doing desperate things. 

Whatever Park was, or whatever he had done, he was pretty far from anyone who had the means to travel to a small, dusty planetoid and pop Elliott out of his titan like a cork. 

"Where did you hear my message again? The sub network? What the hell was it doing there?" The sub network was populated by people offering the types of goods and services that couldn't be advertised through regular channels. Once it had been a seedy, underground thing, but that had been before war had come to the Frontier and now everyone and their mothers was likely to have used it at some point for one desperate reason or another. However, Elliott wasn't offering up baby teeth or his own body, so he couldn't understand why his distress call had landed amongst other messages that were. 

"Your frequency was not stable. I had to refine it just to hear your message. I don't think anyone else _can_ pick it up," Park said evenly. 

Elliott snorted. Perfect. "Alright, so... let me think. Gaea... Gaea..." He clapped his hands together suddenly. "There's a buddy of mine not too far out of Suotamo, names Ramya Parekh. She owns a gun modding place on the edge of town, owes me a favour. You think you can find her? She'll be able to handle it from there."

"One moment," Park responded, though Elliott wasn't exactly going anywhere. 

"Her business is difficult to locate," Park muttered a few minutes later. 

"Yeah, well, she's running a ballistics chop shop, she's not exactly placing ads in the paper," Elliott said with a smirk in his voice. "Can you do it the old fashioned way? Like, drive? Take a cab. Know it's a lot to ask, what with us only having just met and all, but it's kinda life or death back here."

He heard Park sigh softly. "I will endeavour to do my best," Park replied. 

Elliott knew it wouldn't do to shout at him but he could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Ok... buddy, you do you but you kinda hold my life in the palm of your hand, here."

"Of course. I will get it done. Stay safe, Pilot."

"Hey, call me Elliott."

-

He didn't hear back from Park until nightfall. He hadn't been expecting to; for whatever reason the guy made it sound like getting across the city to some ramshackle mod shop wasn't the easiest task in the world, and Elliott was starting to wonder just who it was on the other side of the comms. Beggars couldn't be choosers, he knew that much, but if Park was telling the truth and he was the only one who Elliott could talk to, Elliott had no choice but to hope he was on the up and up. 

"Pilot? Elliott? Do you copy?"

"Yeah man, hey, any news?" he asked in a rush.

"We managed to locate your friend. We told her what has happened to you and she said it will take a few days to get things together, maybe a week to get to you."

Elliott groaned, but a rescue was on its way and the last thing he ought to be doing was checking for teeth. 

"Alright. Thanks man, I appreciate it."

"You're welcome. Good luck, Pilot."

Elliott chuckled nervously. "Hey, that sounded like a sign off. Not gonna leave me here alone are for a week are ya, buddy?"

A crackle of static met his ears. "You wish me to remain on the comms?"

Elliott laughed. "I haven't spoken to another person in days and the only entertainment I got in my not so spacious accommodation is some emergency origami. Please stay man, I'm losing it in here."

"For... for how long?" Park asked nervously. 

"Until you're bored, I don't know. Just... talk to me? Tell me about yourself."

"I don't know what to say."

Of course Elliott's first communication with anyone in days would be with someone with even less of an idea how to carry on a conversation than poor dead JB. "You said we, earlier, right? We found your friend? Who's we?"

"My... my sister and I. She was the one who made the trip to your friends shop."

"Oh, well, then thank her for me, really go to town. I'm talking a hug, Park."

He heard a soft breath that might have been laughter over the comms. "Not sure she will appreciate that," Park replied. 

Elliott smiled in the gloom. "Yeah. Probably not. I had brothers growing up and we never hugged. That meant getting within punching distance."

"So you understand," Park said. 

"Yeah, but they were all older than me so I was the favourite. Used to get away with murder when I was small."

"Mila is younger than me," Park said lightly. 

Elliott chuckled. "So you were the one who got the short end, huh? That's rough, but someone's gotta take the hits."

Elliott didn't know he could hear someone being uncomfortable through the comms but the odd silence told him he might have put his foot in it. 

"We did not have... we were raised in an orphanage so things were different."

Shit. "Oh man, I'm sorry. Don't know when to shut up, that's my problem," he Elliott said quickly.

"You were not to know," Park replied. "And it is of no consequence. She is my family, no matter our history."

Elliott leaned back and stretched out his arms. "Nothing more important than that," he said gruffly. 

Park must have been smarter than Elliott had been giving him credit for because he didn't press the issue. 

"Anyway," Elliott said, sitting up quickly. "You don't have to answer, totally, but why were you on the sub network anyway? I mean, I get it, been there a few times myself, there's this whiskey you can only get imported from Psamthe but it's pricey as fuck, so no judgements." He paused thoughtfully for a moment. "Unless it was really dicey. Then judgements."

Park actually chuckled over the comms. "I... advertise my services there. I was checking for responses."

Elliott cracked up. "You telling me my guardian angel is a hooker?"

"Hacker."

"Ooh, so close." He reached over for his bag and cracked open a fresh bottle of water, hoping that Ramya could keep to her predicted schedule.

"You said you work for the, um, the S... uh C-"

"The SFRC," Elliott jumped in. "Solace Freelance Recovery Company. It's a fancy way of saying we bust into places in our titans and take shit. We're criminals who don't have the stomach to kill people. All certified pilots though, none of those backyard wannabes who crash about in half salvaged titans they can't even link to," he muttered derisively. 

"Yes, I ran you through the database-"

"Of course you did."

"You stated your P-reg number in the message, Elliott."

Elliott shook his head. So he had. Being a pilot, a qualified one with the training to back it up, still carried a certain amount of respect in the Frontier. He tossed his number out so maybe someone would think he might be worth it to save. 

"E. Witt. Solace Militia. It says you did the full tour."

Elliott huffed out a breath. "Yeah, and a fat lot of good it did me," he groused. "We kicked those IMC shitheads back to the Core Systems and they gave me a medal and a bottle of pills to get rid of my sever headache. A year down the line and I'm risking my life to get some guys ride back from some mob boss or," he sighed and looked at his bag, where a disk sat snugly at the bottom, "picking up useless research data on fucking prowlers."

"A sever headache? What is that?"

Elliott shifted uncomfortably. It was a little bit private really, a sensitive matter that went against whatever toxic notion of manliness he had cultivated for himself. 

"Lost my first titan, a Monarch, back on Harmony when the IMC came a-knocking. They had some fucking nerve, I'll tell you, practically walking up to our front door, a fucking handful of IMC pricks who still thought the universe owed them something. Never met anyone who could buy into a shit farm better than an IMC grunt." Elliott had to take a deep breath to stop himself. Being an orphan from Gaea probably meant Park wasn't in the IMC fan club, especially given his extra-curricular activities, but these were strange times and it wasn't uncommon to find out that the guy on the corner selling hotdogs used to lead a squadron of IMC soldiers only months ago. 

"Anyway," he continued gently. "We held them off but the damn bastards managed to scuttle SC, that was my monarch, and you know the whole neural link thing? Hurts like a bitch when it's gets broken suddenly."

"I'm sorry," Park replied, and he sounded like he meant it. "I've not ever met a pilot before, I am not sure how the whole concept works."

Elliott managed a small laugh. "Well, you haven't really met me yet, either," he pointed out. "But hey, when all this is over I'm taking you out for a drink. Least I can do for the guy who saved my life, right?"

"That's not necessary," Park replied, sounding a little flustered. "Besides, I could not leave you. That would be a terrible fate."

Elliott nodded his agreement before realising that Park couldn't see him. "Tell me about it. Not had much else to think about until you came along."

They spoke for a little while longer, during which time Park insisted that Elliott call him Tae, before the hacker had to excuse himself to go to bed. Time had lost a lot of meaning for Elliott, but when Tae finally signed off for the night he checked his watch to see it was a lot more like early morning. He settled into his makeshift bed and began the long, cramped wait until his rescue.

-

He finally caved and put a call out for Tae the next afternoon. The feeling of claustrophobic loneliness was quickly becoming overwhelming and he just needed to hear another voice, even if it was just to tell Elliott he didn't have time to talk right now. He hated the thought of Tae feeling responsible for him, like he had to babysit the idiot who was stupid enough to get himself locked inside his own titan, but he wasn't strong enough to tough out the coming days completely alone. He tried to tell himself that probably not many people were. 

"Tae? You out there buddy?"

He waited, chin resting in his hands as he stared at the comms panel. He had no way of knowing if Tae could hear him or even if Tae had kept the line open at his end, but shouting into the void was the only thing he could do. 

"I am here, Elliott."

Relief flooded him as Tae's voice came through the speakers. 

"Hey man," he said softly. "How ya doing?"

"I am fine. Mila sent a message through; she is keeping in close contact with your friend, and everything seems to be progressing."

"Making sure they don't forget about me, huh?" he said with a smile as a flood of tension left his body. 

"Of course," Tae replied, and there was a note of reassurance in his tone that made Elliott almost sick with gratitude. 

"So... how's your day been? I'd tell you about mine, but honestly I don't get out much. Or at all, so there's that."

Tae chuckled. "My life is not that interesting, Elliott," he said wryly. 

"You kidding me? Saving the lives of handsome, albeit a little stupid pilots just a normal Tuesday for you?"

He heard Tae snort over the comms. "No, but it is definitely the most interesting thing that has happened to me in a long time."

Elliott shifted on the floor, trying to make the harsh metal less punishing on his stiff muscles. "Come on man, you're a hacker. A bona fide cyber criminal. That's gotta be at least a little bit exciting."

"Perhaps you watch too many movies. Most nights I am locked in my room staring at a screen for hours on end, eating noodles from a box."

Elliott grinned. "Oh man, I miss take out. I'd kill for a damn pizza."

"What _are_ you eating?"

"Well," Elliott began casually. "My co-Pilot didn't survive the accident so I've been chowing down on his leg for a few days now."

"What?"

Elliott laughed darkly. "I'm kidding man, my co-pilot was a forty-tonne titan. I've got this shit-awful bricks, high calorie things turned into sawdust and pressed into tasteless rectangles. I think they do it like that so I won't be tempted to eat them all in one go."

He heard Tae tutting at him. "Very funny, Witt," he muttered. "What about meds? Do you have anything to help with your... what did you call it? Sever headache?"

Elliott had to give Tae credit for paying attention. "Nah, old JB here wasn't all up in my melon like SC was. Fragile link, broke all the time. Spent the majority of our outings waiting for it to re-establish. Might have just been easier to break his protocols, but that way lies madness and a lot of dead pilots."

"Protocols?"

"Its something built into practically every titan, no matter whose sitting in the driver seat. Establish link to pilot, uphold the mission, protect the pilot. Breaking them leads to some erratic decisions on the part of the titan's AI, so it's better not to mess with them and leave them well alone."

"Is that why JB sealed you inside? Was it trying to protect you?"

"Fairly certain hitting the ground hatch first at a hundred miles an hour was what did it to be honest Tae. JB is an old, old model man, one of the first series of Ions ever made. Was well past it's prime when I bought it from a scrapper who looked about a day from turning it into parts."

"Still, it seems kind of... nice, perhaps, to have that link. Must be a comfort to know that you're not really alone." Elliott picked up on the wistfullness in Tae's tone but the conversation was getting a little heavy and Elliott had been on the cusp of a breakdown for so long that if Tae let him, he was gonna pour a whole bunch of feeling into the comms and probably scare the poor guy off for good. 

"It's... it's reassuring, I'll give you that. Always better to feel like someone has your back."

They spoke for a little while longer. They both knew it would always be Tae who ended their conversations because unlike Elliott, he actually had somewhere else to go, and eventually he left to take care of some work he needed to do. 

Before he went though, Elliott threw caution to the winds and voiced something that was bothering him at the back of his mind.

"Look Tae, I don't wanna sound needy here or anything but... you'll keep talking to me right? Our little conversations are about the only thing that's keeping me sane."

"Do not worry Elliott. I've got your back."

-

"I just can't understand what possessed the animal to pee on the stove in the first place."

"I can't understand how you didn't notice until you'd turned it on."

"I had only just woken up. "

It was day five of Elliott awaiting rescue. His conversations with Tae had become, much to his relief, far more frequent. Tae made sure to wish him both good morning and good night, and spoke to him often in between. Today's subject was his cat, and how she had peed on his hotplate. 

"The smell is disgusting," Tae complained. 

"Still, gotta smell better there than it does in here. A week trapped in a cramped space without much ventilation is starting to take its toll, man."

"I can imagine."

"Be glad you can't."

-

Tae didn't wish him good morning the next day, and by noon, Elliott was starting to worry. He'd tried talking but had met nothing but empty silence. Up until this point, he had refrained from touching the battery or the comms, so afraid was he of messing the whole thing up, but as time wore on he became more desperate and decided to take a look. 

The battery's output was low, and had put itself into a sleeper mode to aid it's reserves. He gently flicked the switch to wake it up again.

"-ott, are you alright? Can you hear Me? Please respond."

Elliott slumped back on the floor. "I'm here man, I'm here. Boy, it is good to hear your voice Tae."

He heard Tae's sigh of relief, and though he had no face to put to the man he could imagine the shape of him sitting back in his chair, letting out a long held breath.

"Don't have good news though, buddy. Been using the battery from my holo pack to power the comms and it's getting a little low on juice."

There was a pause, and Elliott knew that Tae was trying to process this from piece of information.

"Understood. We should... limit how much we communicate, you will need the comms so your friend can find you when she arrives. Speaking of which, Ramya has told Mila that she will be ready to fly out tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Oh man, that's fantastic," Elliott said, his face a picture of joy. 

"I too will feel much better when I know you are safe. I can send a ping to your comms if I have any news but..."

"Radio silence?" Elliott let out a small, resigned sigh. "Guess I can put up with my own company for a while longer."

"Stay safe."

"I'll try. And Tae? If I don't speak to you again for a while, thank you. I mean it. You've really gone above and beyond." 

"Of course. Take care, Elliott."

"And you."

-

Elliott was trying to feed a lit flare through the vent without burning his fingers off when his walkie hissed with static.

"Witt? You there mate?"

He dropped the flare and heard the hissing clatter as it dropped through the vent. Dashing to snatch up the walkie he slammed painfully into the side of his titan and pressed the button.

"Oh fuck, Ramya, yes, it's me. God, please, I don't know exactly where I am but you gotta come get me. I dropped a flare, look for red smoke."

"Alright, keep your wig on, I'm coming to get you."

-

A day later, and Elliott was safe and secure back at Ramya's shop. After feeding him something with actual flavour, she had frog marched him to the bathroom and refused to let him leave until he had taken a shower. Elliott was willing to do whatever she asked of him, and was almost embarrassingly pleased to let her order him about, just because of how much it meant to him to hear her voice. 

They were sitting in her workshop, drinking coffee while she tinkered. 

"Got a series three Northstar in my sights, if you're interested," she told him as she grappled with the stock of her minigun.

Elliott shook his head. "Yeah, I'm gonna pass. Gonna be a fucking long time before I get inside another titan again."

Ramya chuckled and nodded at him. "Fair play."

"Say, is there any way I can talk to Mila? I wanna thank her and her brother. I'd be a sad damn casualty without 'em."

"Sure," Ramya said, pointing at her laptop with her wrench. "Use that. Details are all on there. Gotta say, that Mila's a hell of a gal. Wouldn't stop on at me til I promised to save your sorry arse."

"That so?" Elliott shot back with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh, shut up Witt."

-

The next evening, Elliott approached a small apartment block in Suotamo with inexplicable nerves. He was desperate to see Tae, to hear his voice again and, essentially, throw himself at the man's feet in gratitude. As he got nearer, however, he spotted two shadowy looking thugs loitering at the doorway who were making no attempts to hide the massive rifles in their arms. 

He ducked down behind a wall, pulling his own pistol from his hip and watched them.

"What the fuck is taking this asshole so long?" one of them complained to the other. "Freezing my fucking ass off waiting out here all day."

The other goon shrugged. "Look, we either stay here and make sure the kid gets the work done, where it's safe, or the boss could send us off on some shitty mission where people try to shoot at us. Either way we get paid, and I know which one I prefer."

Elliott felt a scowl blossom on his face. Without so much as a warning, he fired off a shot and dropped the bigger of the two, before rounding on the other.

"I wouldn't," Elliott said warningly as the other thug fumbled with the safety on his rifle, his pistol raised and pointed squarely at his face.

"You son of a-"

Elliott took him out too, without hesitation, before bolting through the doors and hauling ass to Tae's apartment.

He hammered on the door.

"Tae! Tae it's Elliott! Move your ass, now!"

The door was flung wide and Elliott saw Tae for the first time. He was just some inoffensive looking guy, all crooked tie and black rimmed glasses.

"Elliott, Elliott oh thank goodness but-"

Elliott pushed his way inside and locked the door behind him.

"Its great to see you too man but there's a couple of dead assholes on your doorstep that might raise some eyebrows."

Tae blanched. "You killed Young's men?"

"Did they deserve it?"

"Yes."

Elliott looked through Tae's blinds. "Think it was just the two of them, but we can't stay here. Grab what you need and let's go."

-

Three days later, Tae and Elliott had moved off planet and headed back to Solace. There had been no other threats since that first night, and Tae had explained that Young liked to talk big but his operation wasn't large enough to chase them through the whole frontier on the back of two dead henchmen.

He also explained that the whole time he had been talking to Elliott, he too had been a prisoner, trying to hack into the IMCs most well protected files under threats of torture and death for both him and his sister. 

Now, however, they had been able to stop and catch their breath, and Elliott was finally able to say all the things he had wanted to for so long.

They were staying at Elliott's place. There was no way to trace what had happened back to him so they were safe enough. Tae seemed relieved to have been released from his own strange captivity, but also cautious at the same time. Now, however, he sat on Elliott's couch, his cat purring at his feet, when Elliott came and sat beside him.

"Tae?"

"Hm?"

"I need to thank you. I mean, I really need to. I thought I was a dead man and without you, I would have been."

Tae just shrugged. "As would I. Young is not the sort to leave a loose end untied when you're playing by his rules. Once I had done what he asked of me, he would have killed me for sure."

Elliott rolled his shoulders. "Regardless, you have no idea how... how scared I was back there, Tae. No one was looking for me, I was totally alone. I meant it, your voice... it was like an angelic choir or some shit when I first heard it. I'm never going to be able to tell you what it meant."

Tae turned to face him. "I think we are even."

Elliott felt something spark within him, something new and exciting, but old and familiar all at once. He took in Tae's features, the jut of his cheekbones and the way he held himself, as if he was trying to seem smaller. 

He felt as though he had known Tae for years and years.

-

Elliott did get back into a titan, a few months down the line. Tae was his permanent roommate now, and over that time he had been slowly ignoring the feelings he was starting to develop for the other man. He worried it was all down to some kind of survivor's gratitude, and he didn't ever want Tae to feel in some twisted way as if he owed Elliott anything. Still, money was and always would be an issue, and Elliott was good at one thing, and that was being a pilot.

The day of his first mission, Tae did a piss poor job of trying to act like he wasn't nervous and afraid of what Elliott was about to do. Elliott shouldered his bag, one that was massively over prepared for what he was supposed to do, and stood in the doorway.

"Is this a good idea?" Tae pressed him.

"I'm not really the king of those," Elliott replied with a smile. "Look, two days tops and I promise not to get involved in other people's fights this time."

"That's not funny," Tae complained.

"Ok, I'm sorry. I'll come back, I swear. And I'll call every other hour."

Tae sighed. "You better."

There was a sudden tension between them. Elliott's gaze drifted to Tae's lips and he was seized with the mad desire to kiss him. 

So he did.

Tae stumbled a little but didn't pull away, relaxing into the kiss slowly as Elliott's hands moved to his arms. There was a heavy thud as Elliott's bag fell to the floor and then suddenly Tae was flush against him, pushing his back up against the door. 

Elliott moved a hand to Tae's hair and moaned softly against the other man as his hips began to grind against his own.

"I'm going to be late," he murmured as Tae moved his attention to Elliott's throat.

"Then don't go," Tae whispered against his skin. 

"I have to," Elliott responded, gasping as Tae's hand slipped beneath his waistband. He never would have thought Tae could be as forward as this, but every kiss and touch was laced with a kind of urgency and desperation. 

Words were soon forgotten as Tae pressed himself harder against Elliott, panting and marking his skin. Elliott felt his knees go week and he forced himself to fight back just enough to start to undress. 

"Bedroom,'he gasped as he peeled off his shirt. 

Tae didn't need telling twice and before long both men were tangled together on Elliott's mattress, feverish with their need for the other.

"Come home to me," Tae implored as Elliott arched his back and thrust his hips up to meet Tae's own.

"Always," he swore, his voice breathless and weak. "I will, I will."

It was a broken litany he spoke as he came beneath Tae, hands clutching at his bed sheets as Tae became erratic with his own movements. 

Tae grunted filthily as came too, choking out a sob as he collapsed on Elliott, drawing in painting gasps. 

For a moment they lay beside each other in silence as they stilled their breathing, hands finding each other on the bed. 

"Now I'm gonna be really late," Elliott said with a laugh.

Tae laughed beside him. "We're criminals. We keep our own time."

"Yeah," Elliott agreed, rolling over to kiss Tae lazily. "True."

Tae curled into him while Elliott pressed kisses to the crown of his head. "How is it that getting sealed inside a damn titan ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me?" he said softly. 

Tae's hand came to rest on Elliott's shoulder. "I don't know," he said. 

Elliott decided to put off his mission for another day. Bills could wait, work could wait but he couldn't, not anymore. If there was one thing Elliott understood, it was that life was too short not to take a chance.


End file.
